(1) In a decision announced late on May 17, Colombia’s Constitutional Court appears to have dealt a severe blow to implementation of the FARC peace accord. In a 5–3 vote, the magistrates did away with key parts of “fast track,” the special legislative authority the Court approved last December to allow swift passage of laws to enact the November 2016 peace accord’s commitments.

The new changes result from the Court’s consideration of a suit brought by Iván Duque, a senator from the opposition party led by former president Álvaro Uribe, the peace accord’s most vocal opponent. The Court struck down the ability to get a vote on a full bill without amendments or modifications (votar en bloque, similar to how the U.S. Congress approved free-trade agreements in the 1990s and 2000s). It also struck down a requirement that the executive branch approve of changes to implementing laws under “fast-track” (a protection against changes that might violate the accord’s commitments). The decision does not undo the few peace-implementation laws that have already passed, like the amnesty for ex-guerrillas not accused of war crimes.

Without “fast track,” the danger is that Colombia’s Congress might treat what was agreed after four years of negotiations in Havana as a mere suggestion. Legislative wrangling could delay, change unrecognizably, or quietly kill some of the government’s accord commitments.

We still need to see the actual text of the decision to interpret the potential damage. In the meantime, here is a sample of what analysts are saying.

The government’s lead negotiator in the FARC talks, Humberto de la Calle, said the Court’s decision “opens the door to a cascade of modifications to what was agreed,” calling it a “swindle.”

Juanita León and Tatiana Duque of La Silla Vacíadiscuss the “hard blow” that the Court’s decision represents for the peace accord’s implementation, which they say is a “triumph” for Uribe’s right-wing opposition party. On the bright side, though, León and Duque say that congressional deliberation and compromise might restore to the accord some of the credibility it lost when voters rejected it by a 50.2 to 49.8 percent margin in an October 2, 2016 plebiscite.

“The legalistic complexity of the debate is such that few Colombians have managed to understand the devastating effects that this decision has on the future of peace in Colombia,” wroteSemana columnist María Jimena Duzán.

Rodrigo Uprimny, a much-cited legal scholar from the think-tank DeJusticia, believes the decision was “legally incorrect” and worries that it might “make accord implementation slower and harder, as political groups opposed to or skeptical of peace could use the ability to introduce changes, and to vote article by article, to attempt, in bad faith, to block the accord’s implementation.”

Semana magazine lays out seven pessimistic effects that the decision will have on the peace process, concluding that “the ball is now in Congress’s court” at a bad time–just 10 months before the next quadrennial legislative elections.

(2) President Juan Manuel Santos visited Washington and met with Donald Trump at the White House. Trump appeared not to have been well-briefed about Colombia. “Trump did not mention Colombia’s hard-fought peace process until a reporter asked about it,” the Los Angeles Timesreported. “He then praised Santos’ efforts. ‘There’s nothing tougher than peace,’ Trump said, ‘and we want to make peace all over the world.’”

Santos’s visit came just 13 days after the 2017 foreign aid budget became law, including the $450 million post-conflict aid package (called “Peace Colombia”) that the Obama administration had requested in February 2016. (The link points to $391 million in aid, because it doesn’t include assistance through the Defense Department budget and a few smaller accounts.)

As the Trump administration prepares to issue to Congress its request for foreign assistance in 2018—which is expected today—two senators appear to be occupying the Republican legislative majority’s “turf” on Colombia policy. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) explained in a Miami Herald column that he opposes the FARC peace accord, but supports the “Peace Colombia” aid package with conditions. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) supports a more generous approach to lock in the peace accord’s security gains. Sen. Blunt, along with Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), co-chaired an Atlantic Council task force that issued a report coinciding with Santos’s visit, which endorsed aid within the “Peace Colombia” framework.

(3) The Colombian Presidency’s post-conflict advisor, Rafael Pardo, says the government will launch 12 pilot projects this year to start work on one of the most ambitious parts of the peace accord’s rural development chapter: a cadaster, or mapping of all landholdings in the country.

Ex-presidents and peace process opponents Álvaro Uribe and Andres Pastrana had either a conversation or a brief contact with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Good Friday. They were guests of one of the resort’s members, and the Miami Heraldreports that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) may have helped arrange the meeting, or encounter, or whatever it was. The ex-presidents no doubt had at least a brief opportunity to express to Trump their opposition to the FARC peace accord.

Ex-president and sitting Senator Uribe sent a blistering missive to the U.S. Congress, and to much of the Washington community interested in Colombia, attacking the peace accord. The document included many false claims, which were rebutted by WOLA, by Colombia’s La Silla Vacía investigative journalism site, and by 50 members of Colombia’s Congress (PDF).

The dilemma of ex-FARC splinter or “dissident” groups is the subject of reporting by Verdad Abierta in Tumaco, Nariño, and Medellín’s daily El Colombiano, looking at the roughly 110-member “1st Front” in Guaviare.

FARC leaders are hinting that the disarmament process may be delayed as much as 90 days beyond the originally foreseen 6 months. They blame government slowness in complying with commitments. The government is reluctant to bear the political cost involved with granting such an extension.

The FARC is also hinting that it may want to allow its members to stay in the 26 disarmament zones after the 6-month (or perhaps 9-month) process concludes, or even to settle in them permanently.

President Juan Manuel Santos paid a surprise visit to one of those zones, in Puerto Asís, Putumayo, after visiting the site of a massive mudslide that killed hundreds in Putumayo’s capital two weeks earlier. VICEdocumented a visit to the site in Tumaco, Nariño.

Speaking of extensions, Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo said that, due to the legislature’s slowness in approving legislation to implement the peace accords, the government may seek to extend “fast track” lawmaking authority for another several months. The six-month authority expires at the end of May.

Colombian soldiers and police found a FARC arms cache in Putumayo. Opposition politicians called it a sign of guerrilla bad faith in the disarmament process. Maximum FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño said the guerrillas are working with the UN mission to collect 900 arms caches hidden around the country.

WOLA called for the UN’s post-disarmament mission to make guaranteeing human rights, and the security of human rights defenders, a central focus of its work. This should include a prominent and autonomous role for the Colombia office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

An essay in Semanalooks at the international community’s growing concerns about the Colombian government’s continued stumbles in implementing the peace accord.

Verdad Abiertaasks what will happen if the military’s thousands of “false positive” killings end up being tried by the special transitional-justice system established by the peace accords. Since many involved hiring criminals to murder civilians so that soldiers could win rewards granted for high body counts, these cases’ link to the armed conflict is tenuous at best.

On Easter Sunday Colombia’s former president, Álvaro Uribe, wrote a blistering attack on Colombia’s peace accords with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas. He sent it in English as a “message to the authorities and the Congress of the United States of America.” It went to every U.S. congressional office, as well as to Washington’s community of analysts, advocates and donors who work on Colombia.

Inaccurate=pink. Debatable=orange.

Uribe, now Colombia’s most prominent opposition senator, is the most vocal critic of the peace process led by his successor, President Juan Manuel Santos. The ex-president’s missive leaves out the very encouraging fact that 7,000 members of the FARC, a leftist guerrilla group, are currently concentrated in 26 small zones around the country, where they are gradually turning all of their weapons over to a UN mission. One of the organizations most involved in the illicit drug business has agreed to stop using violent tactics for political purposes and to get out of the drug economy. The process currently underway is ending a bloody conflict that raged for 52 years, and holds at least the promise of making vast areas of Colombia better governed, and less favorable to illicit drug production.

Colombia’s peace accord implementation is going slowly, and faces daunting problems. There is a responsible, fact-based critique that a conservative analyst could make. Uribe’s document is not that critique. It suffers from numerous factual inaccuracies and statements that are easily rebutted. Its fixation on the FARC, a waning force, deliberately lacks important facts regarding other parties to the conflict and it does little to explain how the United States can help Colombia address post-conflict challenges.

Here is WOLA’s evaluation of several of the points made by Álvaro Uribe in this document, and evaluations of their accuracy. The vast majority of his claims are either inaccurate, or debatable.

Statement:

“Coca plantations were reduced from 170,000 ha to 42,000 ha, now there are 188,000 ha according to the lowest estimate.”

Inaccurate. Two sources estimate Colombian coca-growing: the U.S. government and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (working with the Colombian government). Their highest, lowest, and most current estimates of Colombian coca-cultivation are as follows.

Source

Highest before current

Lowest

Most current

U.S. government

170,000 (2001)

78,000 (2012)

188,000 (2016)

UNODC

163,300 (2000)

48,000 (2012-13)

96,000 (2015)

No estimate shows a drop from 170,000 to 42,000 hectares. Both show the lowest estimate in 2012, two years after Uribe left office. 188,000 hectares is not the “lowest” current estimate, it is the higher of the two. Using the 188,000 hectare (U.S.) figure yields an increase from a baseline of 78,000, not 42,000.

Nobody denies that Colombia’s post-2012 coca boom is a problem, but Uribe’s statement exaggerates its severity still further.

Statement:

“THE CAUSE OF THIS DANGEROUS TREND: The government has stopped spraying illicit crops to please the terrorist FARC.”

Inaccurate. First, the October 2015 suspension of “spraying illicit crops” with herbicides from aircraft is one of seven causes for the boom in coca cultivation, which WOLA explained in a March 13 report. (The other six are a decline in manual eradication, a failure to replace eradication with state presence and services, a drop in gold prices, a stronger dollar, a promise that people who planted coca would get aid under the FARC peace accords, and an increase in organized coca-grower resistance.) Giving all explanatory weight to the suspension of herbicide fumigation is misleading, as even the State Department recognized that the program’s effectiveness was “significantly reduced” by “counter-eradication tactics” like swift replanting and pruning sprayed plants.

Second, the suspension of aerial spraying had nothing to do with the FARC. Colombia’s Health Ministry pushed to end spraying with the herbicide glyphosate after a 2015 World Health Organization literature review concluded that the chemical is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” (In March 2017, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment came to a similar conclusion.)

Third, the FARC-government peace accord (PDF) does not prohibit aerial spraying. It reads, “If crop substitution does not prove possible, the government does not renounce the instruments it believes to be most effective, including spraying, to guarantee the eradication of crops of illicit use.” And today, government personnel continue to spray coca fields with glyphosate from the ground, even though this may “displease the FARC.”

Statement:

“Manual eradication was reduced and it moves forward preferably with communities’ consent, that is, with FARC’s consent.”

Debatable. The equation of rural “communities” with “the FARC” exaggerates the FARC’s power—many if not most of these communities’ members are not FARC supporters (PDF). By implicitly tying them to what until recently was a violent, radical group, this formulation also marginalizes and endangers these communities’ residents.

Statements:

“FARC has designed its own justice.”

“FARC’s kingpins and their aides have been granted impunity”

Inaccurate. If the FARC were allowed to design its own justice, its members who violated human rights would be amnestied, and their denials of their crimes’ severity would go unchallenged. Also the transitional justice system established by the accords, the “Special Jurisdiction for Peace,” would include the full participation of international judges. Instead, FARC members accused of war crimes must provide full confessions, a full accounting of their assets, and carry out reparations to victims. An independent tribunal will issue sentences of up to eight years of “restricted liberty,” to be served in spaces the size of a small village or hamlet. If FARC members do not abide by the conditions stated in the accord, then they will be subject to ordinary justice that includes longer sentences in regular prisons.

The judges will be Colombian. The negotiations between the two parties on the issue of justice were greatly influenced by international jurists, the International Criminal Court, and the current state of practice within international law. Most importantly, the agreed-upon justice system prioritizes the recommendations that truth, justice and reparations prevail over jail time made by the over 60 victims who traveled to Havana to demand that the process respect their rights.

This is not “prison,” as Uribe points out, and the austerity of conditions in the restricted-liberty zones remains to be determined by the sentencing judges in each case. But it is far from impunity, and far from what the FARC would “design” for its members. Given the sheer number of cases of abuses that took place during five decades of conflict, this special jurisdiction for peace will ensure that emblematic cases are tried. This greatly contrasts with the current justice system, which is unable to produce quick and effective sanctions.

Statement:

“Judges will be appointed by people permissive with terrorism and akin to FARC’s alleged ideology.”

Inaccurate. The judges are being selected by a committee made up of a representative of the UN Secretary General, the European Court of Human Rights, the Criminal Chamber of Colombia’s Supreme Court, the non-governmental International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), and the Permanent Commission of the Colombian State University System. (The list of appointing bodies, agreed in August 2016, also included the Vatican, which declined to participate.) None of these institutions, or their representatives, can seriously be considered “permissive with terrorism” or sharing the FARC’s political views. Not only is this statement inaccurate, it stigmatizes judges in a manner that can undermine their security.

Statement:

“These sanctions are inadequate, they lack incarceration, and are inapplicable because those who are guilty will enjoy simultaneous eligibility for Congress or any other political post.”

Debatable. These sanctions are only modestly less “inadequate” than the 5-8 years in prison given to pro-government paramilitary leaders under a process developed under Uribe’s presidency. (The paramilitaries didn’t kidnap, recruit children, or lay landmines as often as the FARC did, but during their years of greatest activity they killed and displaced far more civilians.) It remains to be seen how austere conditions will be in the village-sized zones where FARC members will serve sentences for war crimes. It also remains to be seen whether sentencing judges will even allow FARC members to hold political office in locations outside their zones of confinement.

Statement:

“Narco trafficking is accepted as a political related crime for funding rebellion, with full impunity, eligibility and no extradition.”

Debatable. Narcotrafficking will be amnestied if it can be shown that the demobilizing guerrilla channeled all profits into the FARC’s war effort and did not profit personally. Demobilizing paramilitary group members were held to the same standard during Uribe’s presidency. Each demobilizing guerrilla must declare his or her assets, and if found to be lying, will be kicked out of the transitional justice system and face regular, criminal justice instead.

Statement:

“Simon Trinidad serves a sentence in the United States because of narco trafficking and the kidnapping of three American citizens, however, his accomplices enjoy impunity in Colombia.”

Inaccurate. FARC leader Simón Trinidad, who was captured in 2004, is in a U.S. prison for his indirect role in kidnapping three U.S. citizen defense contractors. He was not found guilty of narcotrafficking. FARC members who participated in kidnapping will not be amnestied, they will serve sentences in the transitional justice system.

Statement:

“Our Constitution has been substituted by the agreement with FARC. This amendment will be in place during 12 years.”

Inaccurate. The peace accord does not substitute for anything, as nothing in it suppresses or substitutes anything in Colombia’s constitution. For 12 years, the accord has a legal standing that prevents Colombia’s Congress from passing laws that might violate or undermine its commitments. That is a sound mechanism, and it’s hard to imagine any peace accord going forward without a similar protection, even if it may resemble a temporary constitutional amendment.

Statement:

“The NO VOTE won the Plebiscite.”

True with a caveat. Uribe’s U.S. audience should be aware that the “NO” victory was not overwhelming: the margin was 50.2 to 49.8 percent. More troubling was the remarkably low level of voter participation: 63 percent of eligible Colombians failed to vote on October 2, 2016. The majority of Colombians in regions currently impacted by the conflict voted in favor of the accord. Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, who are disproportionate victims of displacement, violence and conflict, resoundingly voted in favor of peace.

Statement:

“The Government did not include substantial changes, and, with the non-understandable support from the Constitutional Court, did ratify the agreement through a proposition in Congress, in clear contradiction to the Plebiscite outcome.”

Debatable. After the original August 2016 accord was defeated by the October 2 plebiscite, Colombia’s government heard proposals from leading opponents, which it took to the FARC for several weeks of re-negotiation. The resulting November 2016 accord included over 500 changes. Substantial adjustments included severely restricting the size of zones to which FARC war criminals would be confined, requiring FARC members to declare all of their assets and provide “exhaustive and detailed” information about links to the drug trade, and requiring case-by-case consideration instead of blanket amnesty for drug trafficking. One change that Uribe and other accord opponents did not get was a revocation of the 10 automatic seats in Congress (5 in the 166-person House and 5 in the 102-person Senate) that FARC members will occupy between 2018 and 2026.

Uribe’s complaint that the government, the Constitutional Court, and the Congress overruled the Plebiscite outcome is, in fact, a recognition that three branches of government unanimously approved an accord that was significantly amended after losing the October 2 vote by a hair-thin margin.

Statement:

“the current Government has not gone as far as Maduro in Venezuela, but the inheritance will allow the possible weak or pro FARC Governments of the future to adopt the same path”

Inaccurate. The government of Juan Manuel Santos, which will be in office for one more year, has weakened neither free speech nor judicial independence: in fact, the Constitutional Court already struck down one of its first decrees for implementing the peace accords. It is not clear why Uribe thinks that Colombians might suddenly opt for a pro-FARC, pro-Venezuela political path. The latest bi-monthly Gallup poll (February, PDF) gave the FARC a 19 percent approval rating and 2 percent for Nicolás Maduro’s government in Venezuela. (It also showed Uribe’s own rating at 49 percent with +3-point net favorability, down from consistent measures over +40 during his presidency.) This statement is completely unfounded.

Statement:

“Colombia has poverty and unequal income distribution not because of the private sector, but because the lack of many more and robust private enterprises.”

Inaccurate. It is frankly odd to assert that Colombia’s poverty and inequality have a single cause. It is further bizarre not to include corruption and a weak rule of law among the causes. Meanwhile, the World Bank places Colombia in 53rd place, out of 190, among the world’s most business-friendly countries: not a stellar ranking, but not low enough to be the single explanation for poverty and one of the world’s worst rates of inequality (PDF). If anything, peace in conflictive regions would do much to improve security and opportunities for international investment in Colombia.

Statement:

“Only a few children have returned to their families out of more than 11,000 that were kidnapped.”

Debatable/Inaccurate. The statistic refers to all FARC recruitment of minors between 1975 and 2014. Obviously, the overwhelming majority of these children have long since grown up. Many deserted, were captured, or were killed by government forces. Some became guerrilla leaders. As of January, according to Colombia’s Defense Ministry, there were about 170 child combatants still in the ranks of demobilizing FARC; though turnovers to the Red Cross have begun, the process has been too slow.

Statement:

“Our secret services, some years ago, estimated at 40,000 the number of guns in the hands of FARC. The President of Colombia expressed recently that the organization was going to give up 14,000, however, FARC ́s members have announced that 7,000 guns will be let down.”

Debatable. There is no way to verify a statistic that comes from “our secret services,” but since the FARC are demobilizing about 7,000 fighters, a statistic of more than five guns per combatant seems laughably high.

Uribe’s statement doesn’t refer to FARC “militia” members: part-time, non-uniformed guerrilla supporters who operate mainly in urban areas. About 6,000 militia members—nobody knows the true amount—are expected to report to disarmament sites, where they are required to spend a few days registering and handing over whatever weapons they possess. This may increase the final weapons count beyond the 7,000 of which the UN mission is currently aware.

Statement:

“Nothing has been informed about the missiles and other dangerous weapons owned by FARC.”

Debatable. If the FARC have, or had, missiles, they did not use them during the conflict. The only evidence we’ve seen is in a 2012 video of a single unsuccessful use of a SAM-7 shoulder-fired missile.

Statement:

“Chavez and Maduro have been the supporters of terrorism in our country.”

Debatable. The Venezuelan government has done very little about the freedom with which Colombian guerrilla groups operate on the Venezuelan side of the common border. However, Colombian organized crime and paramilitary groups have also operated with great freedom in these poorly governed territories. Captured guerrilla communications indicate that FARC leaders discussed financial support with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, especially during a 2007 period when Uribe authorized Chávez to serve as a go-between in a failed effort to free guerrilla hostages. We don’t know whether any financial support was actually delivered.

In their contacts with guerrillas, Venezuelan leaders encouraged them to negotiate peace and to win power, as they did, through non-violent electoral politics. Venezuelan diplomatic and logistical support, too, contributed importantly to the success of Colombia’s peace talks with the FARC. If Venezuela was trying to promote “terrorism” in Colombia, why did it so robustly support peace negotiations?

By now, the UN mission in Colombia has inventoried more than 7,000 weapons that over 6,900 FARC members have brought to 26 disarmament sites around the country. The FARC is handing these arms over to the UN in phases.

FARC members concentrated at the disarmament site outside Puerto Asís, Putumayo, have offered to help with rescue and rebuilding efforts after mudslides and flooding destroyed much of the departmental capital, Mocoa, which is about two hours’ drive away.

Two former presidents, José Mujica of Uruguay and Felipe González of Spain, visited Colombia in their role as international representatives of a government-FARC commission to monitor compliance with the peace accords’ commitments.

The investigative journalism website Verdad Abierta finds some truth to FARC allegations that elements of Colombia’s military have been trying to coax guerrillas away from the sites where they are to disarm collectively, so that they might enter the Defense Ministry’s program for individual deserters.

The new administration in the United States has said almost nothing about future U.S. support for peace implementation in Colombia. So every statement that does come out is important, like this one from April 3:

“Right now as the United States works through its budget process both for the current budget here that we’re in right now, Fiscal Year 2017, as well as the next budget year, we are evaluating how our assistance funds can be best utilized to support the highest U.S. priorities. Supporting the peace process in Colombia has traditionally been a high priority for the United States. We look forward to working with the Colombian Government in order to make sure that our assistance dollars are utilized as effectively as possible.”

On the evening of March 28, Colombia’s Congress approved the transitional-justice system envisioned in the peace accords. This system, the “Special Peace Jurisdiction,” will try and punish war crimes that were ordered, planned, or committed by the FARC, the Colombian government, or private citizens. WOLA, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and others have criticized some of the changes to the original accord that Colombia’s Congress added, and that we hope Colombia’s Constitutional Court will correct.

Two prominent generals imprisoned for their role in human rights crimes have signed up to have their cases considered by the new Special Peace Jurisdiction. This holds out the possibility of reducing their sentences in exchange for full confessions and reparations. As many as 2,000 convicted or accused military personnel may choose the transitional justice route.

“The discourse rejecting indulgence for the eternal enemy—the FARC—helps avoid speaking of what is truly feared: that economic, military, and political elites’ ties to atrocities might be placed in evidence,” reads a tough analysis of transitional justice by human rights lawyer Michael Reed Hurtado at Razón Pública.

A coalition of Colombian human rights groups voiced strong concern that the country’s new transitional justice law does not give “high level entity status” to a new Unit for the Search for Disappeared Persons in the attorney-general’s office, as envisioned in the peace accord.

As peace talks with the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas continue to struggle, violence continues. An ELN ambush in the northeastern department of Arauca, where the guerrilla group is at its most active, killed two soldiers on March 27. A Colombian armed forces aerial bombardment killed 10 ELN guerrillas at an encampment in the Catatumbo region, also in northeastern Colombia, on April 1. Meanwhile the La Silla Vacía investigative journalism website denounced an intimidating message from one of the ELN’s most powerful leaders, and Jesuit peace activist Francisco de Roux, in his regular El Tiempo column, criticized arrests of civil-society leaders charged with ELN ties, and called for an immediate bilateral ceasefire.

A potentially fatal flaw in the FARC peace accords is their failure to address the “partial collapse” of Colombia’s state, argues the University of Chicago’s James Robinson in a speech at Bogotá’s Universidad de los Andes.

Colombia’s draft law creating a transitional justice system to try war crimes, two elements of which WOLA strongly critiqued last week, has not yet passed. The legislature failed to reach a quorum last Wednesday night. A new vote will be attempted the night of Tuesday the 28th.

FARC and government representatives met in Bogotá over the weekend to review the peace accords’ implementation so far. It was the two teams’ first formal meeting since the accords’ November 24 signing. A joint communiqué commits the government to finishing construction of disarmament zones by April (finally), and to speed up mechanisms to guarantee security for political activists. The FARC promised to turn over its final list of all its members.

Two former presidents, José Mujica of Uruguay and Felipe González of Spain, will be named on March 30 as international representatives to the FARC peace accords’ Committee of Oversight, Stimulus, and Verification of Implementation. This body, with the Spanish acronym CSIVI, will produce regular evaluations of both sides’ compliance with their accord commitments.

According to government estimates, about 5 or 6 percent of the FARC’s membership refused to demobilize and are considered “dissidents.” Another 2 percent are deserters from the demobilization process. This is considered low by the standards of post-conflict processes, but there are many months to go.

One of the main FARC dissidents, Carlos Carvajal alias “Mojoso” of the 14th Front in Caquetá, turned himself in to authorities. He had led a group of dissidents of unknown size: estimates run from eight to sixty. “Mojoso” will be tried within the regular justice system. He may have yielded in the face of dogged pursuit by his former comrades in the FARC, even though the guerrillas have purportedly been observing a ceasefire.

The acting mayor of Tumaco, the Pacific coast port that is the seat of Colombia’s number-one coca-growing county, alleged that undemobilized FARC members were illegally campaigning in favor of a candidate for an upcoming special mayoral election.

Disarmament

“There is now an inventory of 14,000 FARC weapons that will soon pass into the UN Mission’s hands,” President Juan Manuel Santos tweeted shortly after Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas announced that figure. Villegas added that around 11,000 of the arms that the FARC will “leave aside” are rifles. The UN verification and monitoring mission has so far received 507 arms, most of them from FARC members who have been authorized to act as the organization’s representatives outside the disarmament zones. The FARC has also turned over to the UN the coordinates of its arms caches and stockpiles. A new overview (in Spanish) of how the “laying aside” of weapons is to occur, produced by the Bogotá-based Fundación Ideas para la Paz, points out that the process is likely to take more than the originally planned 180 days.

Construction continues to go painfully slowly at the 26 zones where 7,200 FARC members are gathered to turn in weapons over six months. The UN mission reported [PDF] March 14 that no zone has reached 90 percent completion, and 13 are still at less than 10 percent. “Despite months of planning,” the Miami Herald’s Jim Wyss reported, “many of the camps don’t have adequate potable water, bathrooms, cafeterias, recreational facilities and other amenities that the guerrillas say they were promised,” which is hurting morale at the sites. Poor conditions at the zones appear to be causing a trickle of guerrilla desertions, which is in danger of becoming a flood.

“There is still time to correct the government’s inability to implement the accords,” Sen. Claudia López said. “There seems to be no problem introducing legislation, but to carry something out 200 kilometeres away from Bogotá seems to be too much to ask.”

Uncertainty meanwhile surrounds how the demobilization process will incorporate somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 FARC militias—part-time support personnel—whom the revised peace accord expects to report to the 26 concentration sites for up to a week of registration. About 700 have already done so. The actual number of militia members is unknown, and as most live in cities, it is unlikely that many will bother to emerge from clandestinity and journey to the FARC’s remote rural sites.

Transitional Justice

Defense Minster Villegas announced that he has signed a list of 817 imprisoned members of the security forces who are to request parole under the transitional justice system foreseen in the FARC-government peace accord. Contagio Radio obtained a list of 150 of them that includes some generals and colonels notorious for high-profile cases of human rights abuse.

Much press coverage during the week surrounded the 72 changes that Colombia’s Senate made to a bill creating a transitional justice system to judge guerrillas, military personnel, and civilians who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Reaching agreement on this topic was the most difficult part of the four-year negotiation between the government and the FARC.

The Senate did a favor to civilians accused of contributing to war crimes by making their participation in transitional justice “voluntary” and raising the threshold of evidence needed to bring cases. The Senate did a favor to retired military officers by redefining commanders’ responsibility for their units’ behavior in a way that might allow many to avoid punishment. And it upended the accord on political participation by banning ex-FARC members from politics until they get a sort of certificate stating that they have complied with their peace accord commitments.

Because of these changes, two prominent Green Party senators who are strong negotiation supporters—Claudia López and Antonio Navarro Wolff—voted against the Senate measure. The bill must now go to reconciliation with the House version, then it becomes law, then the Constitutional Court must review it. Meanwhile, Congress must pass a separate law to establish the new justice system’s operational procedures. The International Criminal Court may also choose to review the law, and if the Senate language on “command responsibility” is still in it, the ICC may decide that Colombia is not complying with its international human rights commitments.

Human Rights

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (OHCHR) annual report on Colombia (English – Spanish – summarized in an earlier blog post) expressed concerns about legislative efforts to water down transitional justice, attacks on human rights defenders and social leaders, and the slow pace of the government’s peace accord implementation so far.

For the first time, a FARC leader was a panelist at the report’s launch press conference at a Bogotá five-star hotel. Julián Gallo, until recently known as “Carlos Antonio Lozada,” sat two spots from Police General Carlos Mena at the panelists’ table.

Interviewed by the daily El Espectador, Todd Howland, the longtime director of the OHCHR office in Colombia, did not hide his anger at the changes Colombia’s Senate wrought to the transitional justice bill.

At the dialogue table we worked hard to comply with international standards. In the end something was obtained that isn’t perfect, but isn’t bad. That took years of work. It was too big an effort for the Congress not to take it seriously afterward. That effort was based on an interest in victims’ rights, but now the congresspeople acted as though nothing had happened in Cuba.

Transitional justice

With the right-wing opposition abstaining, the pro-government coalition in Colombia’s Senate passed, by a 61–2 vote, a law to create the “Special Jurisdiction for Peace” (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz or JEP), the new transitional-justice system. Tribunals will judge ex-guerrillas and military personnel who carried out war crimes, as well as civilians who may have ordered, planned, or funded them. The next step is reconciling differences in the law’s House and Senate versions.

The Senate’s major changes to what was agreed in the peace accord are:

Defining “command responsibility” for war crimes to a standard below that of the Rome Statute ([PDF], the international law creating the International Criminal Court), to which Colombia is a signatory. Article 28 of that statute says that commanders are legally responsible for war crimes that they, “owing to the circumstances at the time, should have known” about. The Senate version of the law, reflecting strong pressure from retired military officers, waters that down to commanders having “effective control of the conduct” of those who committed the crime. Former officers are likely to try to evade accountability by claiming that killers under their command were not under their control. If it stands, this is not going to go down well with the International Criminal Court or with human rights groups, including WOLA.

Weakens the JEP’s ability to punish civilians who aided war crimes: they now cannot be tried if the evidence against them comes only from the JEP’s own proceedings.

Puts off for a later law to determine how the JEP will go about deciding, case-by-case, what past drug-trafficking activity is a “political crime” that can be amnestied.

Colombia’s ability to implement the accords

Analysts are voicing worry, or outright pessimism, about the Colombia’s government’s ability—or will—to honor its peace accord commitments. Alejandro Reyes, a prominent Colombian scholar who advised Santos’s first agriculture minister, told the Los Angeles Times that he sees big pushback coming from a nexus of landowners and organized crime:

Researcher Reyes said carrying out those ambitious plans is a tall order for the government because as much as one third of the 15 million acres in question is now controlled by violent drug traffickers and other criminal groups.

“Many narcos and mafiosos have tried to seem legitimate by becoming huge landowners, mainly for cattle ranches,” said Reyes. “You can be sure they will react against any efforts to implement agrarian reform.”

In a piece published at Spain’s daily El País, Enrique Santiago, a Spanish lawyer who served as legal advisor to the FARC during the peace talks, ripped into the Colombian government’s poor implementation of the accords so far.

“The ZVTN [disarmament zones] were to have been built before December 1… but today it is an exception to see one with even half of its infrastructure built,” Santiago observes. “On December 30 the amnesty law was approved… however, judges haven’t applied it.… As of today they have approved less than 70 amnesties of guerrillas, five authorizations of transfer to ZVTNs, and no paroles.” The guerrillas’ own security is also at stake, Santiago adds: “One of the accord’s most important measures is the creation of a specialized Investigative Unit for the dismantling of paramilitary organizations… but the current Prosecutor-General, ignoring the peace accord, seeks to impede this special unit’s launch.”

El Tiempo reporter Marisol Gómez visited a FARC demilitarization zone in the northwestern department of Chocó that had only 31 guerrillas present because facilities still weren’t ready yet.

Violence in Chocó

Chocó, Colombia’s poorest department, has also been the site of numerous recent paramilitary incursions into zones of former FARC influence. These, along with fighting between the Urabeños neo-paramilitary group and the ELN guerrillas, have already displaced hundreds in the Upper Baudó River region, in the almost completely stateless southern half of Chocó.

The military

More than two dozen retired generals and admirals wrote a letter to President Juan Manuel Santos voicing concern that the FARC’s disarmament sites will become permanent “independent republics,” the Los Angeles Timesreported.

Meanwhile Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said that 420 military personnel accused of war crimes (or perhaps accused or already sentenced for war crimes, it’s not clear) have already agreed to have their cases tried by the new Special Jurisdiction for Peace.

In the vast areas of Colombia’s countryside where evidence of government is scarce, you can see the bright green bushes once again growing up to the roadside. They’re usually knee-high, indicating that they were planted recently. They’re in the same parts of the country as before: farmers don’t seem to be cutting down new forest and growing in new areas. Usually, it is one of several cash crops on a farmer’s land: at least some of the legal crops are more profitable, he or she will tell you, but with prices fixed by armed groups or organized crime, coca offers the steadiest income.Colombia is in the midst of a coca boom, perhaps its largest ever. The numbers show an explosion in plantings of the bush that produces leaves indigenous people in Peru and Bolivia (and a few in Colombia) have used for centuries, and drug traffickers today use to make cocaine. Using methods that it does not discuss, the U.S. government estimated 159,000 hectares of coca planted in Colombia in 2015 (a hectare is about two and a half acres). When it releases its 2016 estimate—reportedly on March 14—the U.S. number could reach or exceed 180,000 hectares for the first time ever. (The United Nations releases its own estimates, in cooperation with Colombia’s National Police, usually in June. Using a methodology that its reports endeavor to explain, the UN found 96,000 hectares in 2015. Though the U.S. and UN estimates diverge widely, they tend to follow similar trendlines—and both are increasing.)

Cocaine production is increasing along with the coca bushes. In 2016, Colombian security forces, mostly the police and navy, seized 379 tons of the drug, shattering earlier records and more than doubling the annual haul between 2010 and 2014. And Colombia has already interdicted 51 more tons in the first two months of 2017.

Though evidence-based research has cast doubt on illicit drug supplies’ ability to drive demand, U.S. authorities say that the coca boom is affecting cocaine consumption in the United States, which—though still at decades-low levels—is increasing for the first time in several years. In 2015, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health [PDF] found a second consecutive annual increase in past-month U.S. cocaine users. The State Department’s March 2 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) stated [PDF] that “the number of overdose deaths within the United States involving cocaine in 2015 was the highest since 2007.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 56.7 percent more cocaine in 2015 than in 2014, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration [PDF].

The U.S. government, the UN, and analysts cite several reasons for the increase in Colombian coca production. These include:

In October 2015, the Colombian government suspended its U.S.-backed program of “fumigation”—aerial spraying of the herbicide glyphosate—and has been slow to replace it with any other policy, whether punitive or assistive. The suspension came after a World Health Organization literature review) determined that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The fumigation program was controversial throughout its 22-year existence, as rural dwellers complained of health ailments, growers found ways to work around the spraying, and eradication was poorly coordinated with efforts to build a state presence in abandoned areas.

Colombia reduced other, ground-based forced eradication. Massive forced manual eradication—soldiers, police, or paid civilians pulling coca crops out of the ground—contributed to post-2008 decreases in coca growing. But they proved costly too, as more than 200 eradicators or their police and military protectors have been killed over the past decade, and another 1,000 have been injured, mostly by guerrilla or paramilitary ambushes, sniper attacks, and landmines and IEDs planted in the coca fields. More recently, eradication efforts have met with organized opposition, like protests and blockades. Manual eradication in 2015 was less than one-fifth the peak amount of 96,000 hectares in 2008. Besides danger and conflict, Colombia’s government argues that the manual eradication program is very expensive at a time when falling commodity prices have tightened budgets.

Efforts to bring government into coca-growing zones, as well as alternative development and voluntary eradication programs, did not increase after the suspension of fumigation. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s July 2016 report on Colombia [PDF] noted “a general reduction in alternative development in the entire country.” This is only changing now, as Colombia takes first steps toward implementing the November 2016 peace accord with the FARC guerrillas.

The price of gold fell. Illicit precious-metals mining served as a sort of “alternative development program” in many areas during the early 2010s, when the worldwide financial crisis pushed gold prices to stratospheric levels. The price has since fallen, causing organized crime to turn back to cocaine.

The dollar has become stronger, rising from 1,800 pesos in 2013 to about 3,000 Colombian pesos today. While farm-gate prices of coca didn’t increase in dollar terms, they did increase handsomely in peso terms: a kilogram of coca leaf jumped from about 2,150 pesos in 2014 to 3,000 pesos in 2015, the UN reports. This likely has enticed more would-be growers.

Word spread about the benefits coca-growers would receive from the peace accords, encouraging some farmers to become coca growers. In May 2014, the Colombian government and FARC announced a draft accord on “solution to the problem of illicit crops.” It committed the government to signing agreements with communities of coca-growing families, in which they would voluntarily eradicate their coca in exchange for benefits. (Most of these benefits, like land titles and access to markets, are things that governments should be doing anyway.) Over the next two and a half years, word spread that the government would be essentially subsidizing people who planted coca, a message that, according to the State Department INCSR, the FARC spread actively.

Coca-growers’ organized resistance halted manual eradication in several areas. The government, in the middle of peace talks with guerrillas, decided not to respond in a way that would trigger a wave of violent confrontations with farmers in areas of FARC influence. Unfortunately, neither did the government respond with an increase in non-security presence or basic services.

The coca boom’s causes are complex, and Colombia’s government is hoping that the U.S. government will respond in a manner that recognizes this complexity and joins it in pursuing a lasting solution within the peace accords’ framework. Colombian media have expressed worry that, with a conservative U.S. administration and Congress, the bilateral relationship might once again “narcotize.” The term refers to making drugs the main thing the two governments talk about, along with a return to 1980s rhetoric and get-tough policy prescriptions that yield only short-term results.

This is accompanied by a fear that U.S. support for implementing Colombia’s peace accords may also dampen. Washington hardliners, alarmed by the coca numbers, may call on Colombia to get tougher with coca-growing families and bring back fumigation (which the FARC peace accord discourages but doesn’t prohibit).

William Brownfield, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, was in Bogotá last week to discuss the coca situation. During the Obama administration, he and other U.S. officials voiced disagreement with Colombia’s decision to suspend fumigation. It’s not clear exactly what assistance Brownfield was able to offer, as the White House’s deep proposed cuts to worldwide U.S. foreign assistance—as much as 37 percent—have placed in jeopardy any post-accord increases in aid to Colombia.

One troubling outcome could be cuts to U.S. support for the essential tasks of implementing peace accords—increasing governance and territorial presence, implementing programs for victims—in order to pay for forced eradication. This would be a grave mistake.

Colombia has a plan for reducing coca cultivation: it’s in the peace accord on “solution to the problem of illicit crops,” and it is to include the participation of thousands of former FARC members. This plan deserves support, as long as Colombia is serious about implementing it.

Implementation has started—slowly—as the government has signed agreements with local associations of coca-growers in a few parts of the country. But the overall government response is muddled. In response to mounting concerns about the coca boom, President Juan Manuel Santos has announced plans to eradicate 100,000 hectares of the crop this year, up from less than 18,000 in 2016. Of these, 50,000 hectares are to be the result of forced eradication, and 50,000 are to come from voluntary agreements. But the two objectives both seem wildly ambitious, and may not be running in parallel.

With U.S. backing, the eradication side is off to a faster start. It is taking place with an increased military role: Colombia’s army has already eradicated 6,000 so far this year, and the Defense Ministry has created Strategic Operations Centers to manage eradication campaigns in three locations (Antioquia, Nariño, and Norte de Santander). Sometimes, the eradicators (who may also be police or civilians) pull the plants out of the ground. Increasingly, they are spraying glyphosate—not from aircraft flying from dozens or hundreds of feet above, but from shoulder-mounted backpack sprayers. The arguments for using the chemical are that IEDs and landmines make it too unsafe to get too close to the plants, that this form of spraying is far less indiscriminate than aircraft (avoiding spraying homes, schools, water supplies, legal crops, and livestock), and that coca-growers themselves usually use glyphosate to kill weeds in their fields.

The “voluntary eradication” effort foreseen in the peace accord is already underway, but on a more pilot basis. Coca-growers’ associations have formed in several parts of the country to negotiate eradication agreements with the government, and many are affiliated with a national structure called the Coordinator of Coca, Poppy, and Marijuana Cultivators, or COCCAM. Communities have signed eradication pacts in parts of Caquetá, Guaviare, Norte de Santander, Putumayo, and Vichada. Taken together, the pacts signed so far involve 55,000 families growing about 38,000 hectares. Each family may receive assistance valued at about US$10,000 over two years, as long as they verifiably eradicate their coca within a year. (These accords alone will cost about US$275 million per year for two years.) Assistance is reportedly to include land titling, which is desperately needed, but may not—at least not for a while—include necessary elements like farm-to-market roads and a more permanent government presence.

Troublingly, there have been reports of forced eradication in communities that are either negotiating or have signed crop substation agreements with the government under the terms of the accord. On March 1, coca-growers in Los Alpes, Guaviare saw police forcibly eradicate their crops the day after they signed a voluntary eradication accord (the government has since suspended forced eradication in that zone, for now). This stands in stark contrast to the spirit of consultation and collaboration with local communities enshrined in the peace deal. Even if they owe more to lack of coordination than to bad faith, such practices could undermine accord implementation in certain areas of the country.

Whether Colombia can implement these voluntary coca reduction agreements quickly is uncertain, especially since the cash-strapped Santos government is now in its final 17 months. Daniel Rico, an analyst who has worked in Colombian government eradication programs, calls the voluntary eradication plan “disproportionate and lacking any sense of reality.”

Another concern is the Colombian government’s capacity to implement what it has promised to do, whether in the peace accords or elsewhere. Its sorry performance in setting up twenty-six small sites for the FARC guerrillas to disarm—after months of advance notice, most were patches of dirt when guerrillas began arriving in early February—is perplexing. Establishing a functional, low-impunity state presence in vast ungoverned territories is essential if Colombia is ever to lock in permanent reductions in coca cultivation, to halt the terrifying current wave of attacks on social leaders, and to prevent other illegal armed groups from assuming control of previously FARC-dominated areas. Governing abandoned areas is a complicated task, but it should be eased by the historic exit of a hostile insurgent group.

Colombia has a plan and recognizes the problem, and the U.S. government can help. But this plan won’t achieve immediate results. Yes, Colombia needs to move faster to implement its commitments. But we strongly counsel against demanding action for its own sake, “narcotizing” the relationship and urging Colombia to return to policies that look tough but didn’t work in the past. Do not force Colombia to give up territorial governance for forced eradication, especially not aerial spraying.

Our two countries have built a close working relationship. That relationship is close enough to allow the U.S. government to trust its partner to implement the voluntary eradication plan that it has laid out. This trust, though, must come with monitoring. The United States, other donor governments, international organizations, and non-governmental groups like WOLA must keep close watch over the coming year or two, to verify that Colombia, the FARC, and coca-growing communities are fulfilling their peace accord commitments.

A “trust, but verify” approach starts with patience. Rather than giving political leaders a quick but evanescent “win” for next year’s press release, the new strategy promises to lock in permanent reductions in coca cultivation. And in its remaining year and a half, the Santos government must prove through actions that it is seizing the historic opportunity that the FARC peace accord provides.

With the end of 52 years of conflict between the Colombian government and armed rebels, civil society activists are playing a key role in constructing a lasting peace and democracy in Colombia. Sadly, the human rights defenders, trade unionists, Afro-Colombian, indigenous and other community leaders conducting this vital effort are under threat. Since the signing of the peace accord between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the start of its implementation, attacks against civil society activists have increased at an alarming rate. While the FARC accord has significantly reduced overall violence in the country, the demobilization of these fighters has created vacuums throughout the country, which are in turn being occupied by paramilitary successor organizations that are making their presence known through selective killings and death threats.

If implemented accordingly, the peace accord is has potential to further a number of promising social reforms. Among other things it is designed to lead to rural land reform, guarantee political participation for historically-excluded political sectors, facilitate the reincorporation of FARC guerrillas into civilian life, deepen consultation with marginalized ethnic groups, provide alternatives to rural farmers who grow coca, and fulfill the rights of truth, justice and reparations for millions of victims. But these goals necessarily clash with certain interests, and the possibility of achieving them is leading to illegal armed groups’ attacks against activists. Worst affected are members of newer political movements like the Marcha Patriotica, ethnic minority activists and community organizers in rural areas. The Colombian government must prevent further harm from taking place to these activists. Perpetrators of these acts should be prosecuted and brought to justice immediately. If these attacks continue, the peace accord with the FARC and nascent peace talks with the National Liberation Army will be seriously undermined. Ultimately, the success or failure of a lasting peace in the country will depend on the government’s ability to ensure justice for these crimes.

The Statistics Alone are Sobering, But the Story is Deeper

Unfortunately, the news on the ground has been bleak: a number of Colombian organizations report that since September 2016, the security situation faced by civil society activists has been rapidly decreasing. While the numbers differ depending on multiple definitions of human rights defenders, activists and community leaders, what is certain is that all reports point to the problem getting worse. Somos Defensores reports that from January to December of 2016, 80 social leaders were killed. The majority of these murders took place in Cauca Department. INDEPAZ, on the other hand, reports that during that same period, 117 social leaders and human rights defenders were killed. They also add that in Valle del Cauca (5), Cauca (43), and Nariño (9) departments, a combined total of 57 activists were killed (two thirds of the total). The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ office, meanwhile stated that since the November 24, 2016 signing of the accord, 13 of the 53 killings of civil society figures recorded by that office in all of 2016 took place.

The trend has not gone entirely unnoticed. On November 2, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a statement of concern regarding the killings of human rights defenders in Colombia in 2016. The Commission found that while the numbers of death threats and intimidation faced by human rights defenders are down from 2015, the number of actual killings is up. It also urges Colombia to include in its investigations the premise that these individuals were murdered due to their work defending human rights. On February 7 the IACHR condemned the killing of another 7 people in 2017. It is particularly concerning that five of the seventeen killed were ethnic minorities, including two women.

The impact of murders, attempted murders, threats and aggression against activists has a disproportionate impact on indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. This disproportionate impact is true numerically speaking–one source states that 30 percent of those civil society activists killed are ethnic minorities—as well as sociologically. Such killings cause disastrous effects on ethnic minorities’ collective, organizational processes and their ability to work together to advocate for their land, ethnic and cultural rights. .

In addition to the threats faced by community leaders, we also see illegal armed groups targeting ethnic leaders’ extended family members. Given this, it is necessary that a differentiated approach is taking when creating prevention and protective measures for these leaders and their communities. Constitutional Court Orders 004, 005 and 092 on Afro-Colombian, Indigenous and Women IDPs contain useful information on how to prevent the displacement of key communities. In many circumstances collective protective measures are required rather than individual ones. With U.S. Embassy support the Association for Internally Displaced Afro-Colombians (AFRODES) worked to help develop collective measures for Afro-Colombian leaders and displaced communities at risk in urban and rural environments. However, Colombian authorities never followed through with implementing what was required. Access to justice for these communities is often more challenging, so it is the clear responsibility of the government to break down the barriers that exist for ethnic groups’ entry into the judicial system.

When it comes to the exact number of killings and attacks against Afro-descendant and indigenous leaders and communities, there are, generally speaking, no comprehensive statistics available. The reasons for this are many: institutional racism, underreporting by ethnic minorities due to fear of reprisals, corruption of local officials and the complex geographical dynamics found in the rural and urban areas they live in. Given this, it is likely that the problem is worse–and less addressed–than what is actually reported. When looking at the Somos Defensores figure of 80 leaders killed in 2016, it is noteworthy that 22 of those killed or, 27 percent of the total, were ethnic minorities (15 indigenous and 7 Afro-Colombians).

Recent Cases of Concern to U.S. Policymakers

WOLA issues periodic action alerts about threats and attacks against civil society. While all cases are of concern, there some are of particular interest to U.S. policymakers. In January, three members of the Communities Constructing Peace in the Territories (CONPAZ) were killed: Afro-Colombian Emilsen Manyoma Mosquera and her husband Joe Javier Rodallega from Valle del Cauca Department, and Wiwa indigenous leader Yoryanis Isabel Bernal Varela of Cesar Department. Ms. Bernal Varela was an outspoken leader for the rights of indigenous Wiwa, Kogui and Arhuaco women. She was disappeared and fifteen days later found dead with a bullet in her head. Ms. Mosquera was a tireless advocate for the rights of youth in the Community Council of Bajo Calima. She and her partner were killed in Buenaventura. Meanwhile, the Inter-Ecclesial Commission for Justice in Peace that legally represents CONPAZ suffered security incidents. Also in January, Marino Cordoba of the AFRODES and the Ethnic Commission suffered the murder of two of his relatives at the hands of Gaitanista paramilitaries in Chocó. This came just a few months after his son was killed by these same men in October 2016. AFRODES leaders continue to face security challenges throughout the country.

The Indigenous Association of Northern Cauca (ACIN), the Wayuu territorial authorities, and the Afro-Colombian Community Councils of Northern Cauca (ACONC) continued to face assassination attempts, attacks and death threats. The ACIN and ACONC are engaged in defending their ancestral lands from illegal mining, environmental damage and the encroachment of illegal armed groups. After the many publicized deaths of indigenous children due to malnutrition, dehydration and the humanitarian crisis in their region, Wayuu authorities advocated for cleaning up corruption and mismanagement of funds by Colombia’s Child Welfare Agency (ICBF). They have also denounced the environmental damage caused by the Cerrejon coal mine. The latter has resulted in stigmatization of Wayuu communities in the press and death threats. Particularly worrisome is the deteriorating security situation faced by members of the San Jose de Apartadó Peace Community in Antioquia, and Operation Genesis victims in Cacarica, Chocó, who have denounced paramilitary activity in their regions.

Relevant Mechanisms in the Accords and Steps Forward

The peace accord with the FARC signed on November 24 includes mechanisms that guarantee the physical protection for human rights defenders and guarantees for them to do their work. In the political participation (point 2 of the accords) it stipulates that adequate normative and institutional prevention, protection, evaluation and monitoring of will take place to guarantee the security for leaders and organizations of social movements and human rights organizations. The accord states that “security guarantees are a necessary condition for consolidating the construction of peace and coexistence.” It also highlights the importance of civil society activists in the implementation of the plans and programs set forth by the accord.

The third point of the accords, the end of the conflict section, includes an agreement “to guarantee security by fighting criminal and other organizations responsible for homicides and massacres that target defenders, social and political movements, or who threaten persons who participate in the implementation of the accords and construction of peace.” This includes actions against “organizations referred to as successor paramilitary organizations and their support networks.” This point then proceeds to include the agreement that several mechanisms will be developed to address this problem. These include a National Commission to Guarantee the Dismantlement of Criminal Organizations, which would be responsible for attacks against defenders, social and political movements that include paramilitary successor groups. It calls for the creation of a Special Investigation Unit to dismantle these criminal organizations and their networks, the integration of an Elite Corps within the National Police and an integral security system for policy development. Lastly, it sets forth basic guarantees for prosecutors, judges and other public servants involved in this fight.

The press coverage reveals that in his conversation with President Juan Manuel Santos, President Donald Trump indicated that he would personally see to it that Colombia receives the assistance package needed to consolidate peace, which will first require approval from the U.S. Congress. Such an indication of support for Colombia’s peace is a positive first step. We would also encourage policymakers to prioritize operationalizing the commitments found in the accord pertaining to protecting human rights defenders, community leaders and political parties, and dismantling paramilitary successor groups.

After a months-long delay, today the Colombian government is finally starting formal talks with the country’s second-largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN). The negotiations are sure to raise questions about Colombia’s post-conflict future, the implementation of the peace accords with the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and ongoing human rights issues. With today’s launch of the peace negotiations’ public phase in Quito, Ecuador at 5:00 p.m. local time, here is an overview of the process.

Talks with the ELN were first announced in 2016. Why the delay?

While a joint statement announcing the beginning of talks was released in March 2016, the beginning of the Quito negotiations was delayed over the government’s insistence that the rebels release all hostages and kidnapping victims. (The government held the FARC to the same standard in 2012; the larger group renounced kidnapping months before the announcement of formal talks.) This included Odín Sánchez, a former lawmaker and member of a political family dynasty that has been linked to paramilitary and corruption scandals in the department of Chocó. Until his release from captivity last week, Sánchez had been held since agreeing to swap places as an ELN hostage with his brother, former Chocó Governor Patrocinio Sánchez Montes de Oca. Odín Sánchez’s February 2 release, on top of the February 6 release of a soldier taken captive by the group in January, removes a final barrier to the formal start of talks.

Why are the ELN talks important?

While most attention on Colombia’s armed conflict has focused on the roughly 7,000-strong FARC, the ELN—with up to 2,000 members—retains an active presence in the country, mostly in northeastern Colombia though their influence also extends to Chocó and other parts of the Pacific coast. With the FARC beginning to demobilize, there is concern that the ELN, along with criminal organizations and neoparamilitary groups, could move to fill territorial and economic power vacuums that the FARC leave behind. Reaching a peace accord with the ELN would help ensure that the group does not expand its area of influence or recruit disenchanted FARC deserters. And it would offer an opportunity for improved governance in ELN-controlled areas that have long suffered from a lack of state presence and strong democratic institutions.

For the United States, a peace deal would ultimately mean the effective dissolution of another group on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, as well as a potential boost to anti-drug efforts at a time when authorities are slowly taking steps toward a new strategy to address coca production in rural Colombia.

What will the negotiations look like?

It has taken more than two years of intricate exploratory talks—a period marked by setbacks like the kidnapping of Odin Sanchez as well as that of Spanish journalist Salud Hernández—to finally reach a point where both the government and the ELN can pursue dialogues with a formal agenda.

Moving forward, the two negotiating teams will be headed by former Agriculture Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo and the ELN’s Israel Ramírez Pineda, alias “Pablo Beltrán,” who is viewed as a moderate among the ELN’s five-member Central Command. On paper, the talks’ agenda and methodology remain quite vague. However, from the joint statement on the negotiations (PDF) it appears the process will seek to include the perspectives of civil society and community actors. According to the negotiating parties the agenda will cover the following points:

Participation of society in constructing peace

Democracy for peace

Transformations for peace

Victims

The end of the armed conflict

Implementation

How will talks with the ELN differ from the accords signed with the FARC?

From a practical standpoint, negotiating with the ELN will be a different experience than with the FARC. Unlike the larger guerrilla group, the ELN’s command structure is not as centralized. While it is headed by a five-person Central Command, and a 31-member National Directorate below that, ELN columns operate with a high degree of regional autonomy. This means that decision-making processes and internal deliberations could take longer, and the risk of dissenting factions—or subordinate units that simply ignore orders—is higher.

Although the last two points of the agenda echo items discussed in the FARC talks, it remains to be seen how already agreed-upon elements of justice, reparation, non-repetition, and truth will be harmonized with the accord reached with the FARC in Havana. The government would be wise to avoid revisiting these areas after undergoing a long and unfinished process of designing a new set of transitional justice institutions. Reopening themes covered with the FARC would delay a process that is already destined to face the pressures of an upcoming presidential election in 2018, after which President Juan Manuel Santos will leave office.

The challenge the parties will face during the negotiations’ initial phase is to decide who will participate in this process, and what will be the mechanism to receive thousands of proposals and ideas generated by Colombia’s diverse civil society. As Ariel Ávila of Bogotá’s Peace and Reconciliation Foundation think-tank has pointed out, a key difference between the ELN and FARC talks will be the former’s insistence on expanding talks to include a broader social base. And the government, for its part, appears to recognize that: Juan Camilo Restrepo has assertedthat “dialogue with the remote communities of Colombia will be decisive in the negotiations with the ELN.” In this process, groups like the Ethnic Commission and other victim’s organizations who were heard in Havana may play a large role in organizing communities in rural Colombia for participation in the talks.

International facilitation of this process will be provided by Ecuador as a hosting country. Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and Venezuela pledged to serve as guarantors and will reportedly also host subsequent negotiating rounds, while Norway will play the same guarantor role it played during negotiations with FARC.

What would a constructive U.S. role in the ELN process look like?

The U.S. role in this peace process will likely be drastically different than with the FARC talks, which hosted a full-time special U.S. envoy who played a constructive role in moving the accords along. By contrast the Trump administration has been relatively quiet on the peace accords in Colombia so far, although on February 6 a State Department spokesperson issued a statement confirming U.S. support for the search for peace in Colombia, as well as praising “advances in demobilization.”

This is a welcome remark following recent statements from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who in written responses to questions submitted for his nomination hearing process expressed an intent “to review the details of Colombia’s recent peace agreement [with the FARC], and determine the extent to which the United States should continue to support it.”

WOLA is confident that a review of the Havana accords will in fact give the administration every reason to support them. We also believe that the talks with the ELN are worthy of support, though we caution that they will require much patience. In the meantime, we call on both sides in the talks to move quickly toward a bilateral, verified ceasefire, or at least a series of gradual de-escalation measures. While the guarantor countries have already pledged to provide key support, the United States can play a positive role by refraining from opposing or making destructively critical statements about the ELN process, and encouraging a discussion that is both inclusive of civil society, as the ELN wants, and carried out with discipline, clarity, and purpose, as the government and most stakeholders want.